Israel Defense Force soldiers used pages torn from the Koran as makeshift toilet paper while billeted at a school in the West Bank village of Deir Balut.
The desecration of the Islamic bible, which the IDF insists was unintentional, was discovered after a week-long curfew was lifted from the village last Thursday morning.
A military spokesman said Sunday night that “an IDF soldier apologized when he learned that three pages of Arabic print he had used innocently and unknowingly were pages from the Koran.”
He said the area commander has taken measures to prevent a recurrence.
But the principal of the school, Khalil Abdel Jawad, was inconsolable. He showed filth and litter left behind by the soldiers and expressed his shock and anger over what he called “an insult to our religion.”
The evidence included dozens of pages torn from the Koran smeared with excrement. A volume of the Koran was wedged between a door and a door handle to make it easier to use as toilet paper.
An embroidered table cloth was also smeared with excrement. A hole was punched through the seat of the chair to provide the soldiers with a commode.
Villagers also said that during the curfew the soldiers showered nude outside of the school, in full view of the public.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
